See The Universe
by Princess Pinky
Summary: With her mother gone and no plans for the future, Oswin Oswald heads to the one place that might be able to give her life direction: The Library.


**A/N:** This is a headcanon I've had for a while but I've been too lazy to write it down. I think it's just going to be a two-shot, but possibly a three-shot. But most likely two.

_**See The Universe**_

**Chapter One**

As a modern fiftieth century girl, she'd tried them all: holovids—too hollow, direct-to-brain downloads—too in-your-face, fiction mist—too mystical. No, what she needed was good old fashion books! There was something about the weight of it in her hands that thrilled her to the tips of her toenails.

Being a computer genius, some friends teased her and others were genuinely puzzled at her inability to relate to having a story beamed directly into her brain. She couldn't quite articulate the problem, but the first time she'd experienced a direct-to-brain download it had_ terrified_ her. Her dreams in the months that followed were filled with oily blackness, like the dead void of a computer monitor, with the occasional creatures she could only describe as human sized spoons chasing after her. Always she'd awaken with a singular thought screaming through her brain: _I don't know where I am!_

Naturally, all of this led her to the one place she could relate: The Library. It was a planet sized computer that contained every print edition of every book ever written! How could she resist? She took the public transit crafts to the docking station where she would then ride the teleport down to The Library's surface twice a week on her days off. The first time she'd visited she spent the entire afternoon just walking. Walking and looking and _smelling_. The smell of leather and skin; real, physical people—and other lifeforms—actually cradled these tomes in their hands and claws and tentacles. The thought made her shiver; a good shiver, like kissing someone for the first time.

Books, they were time personified.

"Greetings, Oswin Oswald. I am Courtesy Node seven zero five slash crimson. How may I assist you today?"

Oswin brushed her eyes toward the node. "I appreciate the offer, but I'm cool." Cool? Where had that come from? Oswin shook it off. She splayed her fingers towards a sign hanging from one of the shelves that read _Travel_. "I know what I'm looking for." She didn't, but she didn't want to hurt the node's feelings, if a node had feelings. That was still a contentious topic and had been since the late forty-ninth century.

She smiled and waited patiently as the node's head rotated away and careened down the endless aisle until it was a mere blip on her visual cortex. Swiftly, Oswin turned back to the books and breezed her fingertips across the spines of the shelf closest to her eye level. _Travel._ She'd always wanted to do something more, go somewhere greater, but she was afraid.

Even in the fiftieth century it wasn't unusual for a recent college graduate to not know what they were going to do with their lives, but for Oswin, this was tenfold: she had breezed through university with honors thanks to her magnificence with technology and then as soon as she'd graduated, she felt stuck. Not because the job offers hadn't come, but because she was afraid to take them. Her elderly mother—adoptive, but that made no difference to Oswin as that was the only mother she'd ever known—provided ample excuse to mask her real troubles. Her Library debut occurred one month to the date of her mother's passing.

Things had to change.

It was difficult to wrap her mind around the fact that almost a year had passed already and people were beginning to let her know in subtly stabbing ways that the time for grieving was wearing thin. With no one to hold her back, Oswin had been inching towards the plunge, but she hadn't an idea of where to start.

Her fingers landed on a cover the color of that relic carnival treat from far away Earth: cotton candy. Curious, Oswin balanced her finger on the top of the spine and curled it, tipping the book backwards until it teetered on the edge of the shelf, held in place only by her will. Suddenly she let the book fall, catching it with her free hand. _101 Places to See_, the cover announced in cheerful white and red letters. It looked like a children's book, almost out of place in the travel section. She nearly put it back, but her hand peeled back the cover before her brain could say otherwise.

It wasn't a novel by any means, but soon Oswin was curled in on herself, back resting against the shelves and bum completely numb as she thumbed her way through each of the one-hundred-and-one destination spots, all courtesy of ancient Earth. Somewhere around page sixty she found herself squinting and rubbed her eyes. It was getting dark.

"Dark?" She was _inside_. Surely it couldn't be closing time already. Oswin arched her wrist—The Library was open for another three hours. She looked up and then down the aisle; it was definitely getting darker. _There must be a short in the system_, she decided with a dejected sigh. Of course it would happen in her section. As soon as she got up and took a few steps her bum was greeted with the distinct tingling of pins and needles. She groaned and picked up her pace hoping to shake off the unpleasant prickles by the time she reached Science-Fiction.

But the further she walked, the darker it seemed to get. Her stomach began to feel bloated as though she'd consumed too much water and it was sloshing from side to side with each step she took. It was silly, she wasn't afraid of the dark. Not unless it was darkness permeating from a vacant computer screen. She stopped abruptly and peered over her shoulder. Sections of lights were going out systematically.

Oswin slammed the book to her chest like armor and _ran_.

"Emergency lockdown," a voice echoed ahead of her. As always, the voice sounded clean, like antiseptic. A node rolled out from one of the stacks. "Please evacuate, The Library is sealing itself in two minutes."

She was a descent runner, but she'd walked this corridor a hundred times and knew there was no way to get back to the teleports in under five minutes, even at her fastest gallop. Whatever was happening, she was beyond saving.

Oswin ducked into the nearest aisle and dropped into a sitting position. She drew her knees up to her chest and pressed her hands to her ears to drown out the sound of the nodes' collective warnings. An image emerged in her mind's eye, one of the places from her book. _London_, she thought. Big Ben and the London Eye erected behind her lids and she stubbornly envisioned herself there as the darkness closed in.

A shimmering feeling encapsulated her. It was familiar, but not like a teleport. A part of her wanted to equate it with a nightmare, but this sensation wasn't cold. It felt like, well, it felt smolderingly purposeful and necessary, in the way that saving her work at the conclusion of a project did.

"Run. For God's sake, run. Nowhere is safe. The Library has sealed itself. We can't – oh, they're here. _Argh. Slarg. Snick._"


End file.
